By DAMIEN FISHER, InDepthNH.org
The Libertarian National Committee has had enough of New Hampshire party chair Jeremy Kauffman, his racist social media trolling, and his support for President Donald Trump.
“I go to the mat every day, all of the time, for what’s right and what’s true. And you guys, you freaks, see someone who can do things that you can’t, and it makes you so angry and so bitter, you are loser apes who can’t stand to see someone with abilities that you don’t have,” Kauffman said during his speech at the national conventional held this weekend in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
The national party committee voted Monday to disaffiliate Kauffman’s New Hampshire Libertarian Party from the national organization by a vote of 15 to 2. That vote came after Kauffman campaigned for national chair on a platform of dissolving the Libertarian National Committee.
Kauffman argued the national organization is a failure and that those who oppose him are jealous of his many successes.
“You are so congenitally anti-everything, that when you see someone with something, who can do anything, you melt down. And I am here to cleanse the party of you losers,” Kauffman said.
Kauffman included taking his college ultimate Frisbee team to nationals in his litany of success, while calling the rest of the assembled Libertarians losers.
But one of his key boasts, building a large social media following for the NHLP, is also behind the disaffiliation. Kauffman’s social media content is a swamp of racism, anti-semitism, and homophobia. A tweet blaming Jewish people for the 9/11 terror attacks was counted among the charges against Kauffman.
But his biggest transgression seems to be using the NHLP to endorse Trump during the 2024 election, while denigrating Libertarian Presidential candidate Chase Oliver with homophobic slurs.
After Kauffman’s campaign speech he was ejected from the convention. That came as fellow New Hampshire Libertarian Andrew Allgood was seen giving a Nazi salute during the convention before he was arrested for allegedly assaulting a woman.
On Tuesday, Kauffman told InDepthNH.org: “All the Libertarian Party’s illegitimate and illegal disaffiliation of LPNH will do is alert more people that New Hampshire is the only hope for liberty.”
Kauffman’s already using the incident to raise money for a legal defense.
Without the national party, the New Hampshire Libertarian Party cannot get candidates for office on the state ballot as Libertarians. It also strips members of voting rights at the national conventions.
The flip side is that New Hampshire Libertarians, long tired of Kauffman’s antics, are now free to form a new party without him, and get that recognized by the national party. A source tells InDepthNH.org such an effort at creating a new, Kauffman-free Libertarian party in the Granite State is already underway.
Kauffman does not have a solid track record working with others. He was booted out of the Free State Project in 2023 after he refused to stop posting racist, anti-Semitic, and anti-LGBTQ content on the FSP social media accounts.
Of course, Kauffman is also dealing with criminal charges stemming from an allegedly racist incident in Manchester.
Police were called to the Elm Street Market Basket parking lot around 2 p.m. on April 4 to deal with reports that a man hit another car in the parking lot with his car, fought with several people, and then went inside the store and continued yelling.
One witness told police the suspect, later identified as Kauffman, immediately started making racist statements after the fender bender and tried to fight people. When a bystander, who is Black and from Jamaica, walked by the incident, Kauffman reportedly directed his ire toward that man.
“[He] told him to ‘go back to Africa’ and began spouting racist slang and terms at him,” police report.
Kauffman reportedly continued to scream racist insults at people in the parking lot, according to police. Witnesses told police that Kauffman’s two young sons finally pulled their father away and dragged him inside the store.